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There have been times over the last 18 months, with Port Adelaide mired in mediocrity, where you couldn’t help but wonder whether that two-year COVID period in which they finished top-two twice was some sort of crazy fever dream.
Ageing, defensively vulnerable and uninspired with their ball movement, the Power’s slide was as swift as it was total, and as recently as Round 3 this year, the axe was hovering menacingly over Ken Hinkley’s head.
Seven victories later, and Port have not only put paid to the doomsayers, but, thanks now to an incredible, brutal, never-say-die four-point win over Melbourne, there can no longer be any doubt.
Port Adelaide are BACK.
This was a win built on three core traits: rapidity, ruthlessness and resilience.
The Power ran the Dees off their feet, particularly around the ball, with explosive pace of both leg and football; they brutalised the most fearsome engine room in the game to within an inch of their lives and mercilessly targeted their biggest stars; then, just when it seemed like the Demons had weathered the storm and would win despite all that, found a second win from somewhere to beat 2023’s best fourth-quarter team at their own game.
It’s my pick as the best individual win of the season, by some distance. The old Power – not just the ordinary 2022 edition, the 2020 and 2021 versions as well – probably don’t win this match. That they did speaks volumes – just look at Hinkley’s jubilant celebrations at the final siren. He knows now that this group are a serious shot at something very, very special this year.
Let’s first get the elephant of the room out of the way and talk about Zak Butters. Everyone will be doing likewise, from Power fans at the water cooler on Monday to the media who love nothing more than a breakout star announcing himself on the biggest stage. But all the praise can only do his game so much justice.
Forget the 41 disposals for a second – that count can often be meaningless. It wasn’t with Butters. I counted eight kicks that genuinely got me chuckling on my couch with how incredible they are – his dare to bite off dangerous kicks inboard certain to let in turnovers if they weren’t perfect as remarkable as the passes themselves.
If his silk was to die for, then his ferocity for the ball, particularly when the rain came a-tumbling in the second half and the game became the toughest of slogs, was just as vital. With nine clearances for the match – three, remarkably, coming in the third term where he was seemingly the only Power player who rocked up – no one did more to give Port the territory domination they needed to overwhelm Melbourne’s famously solid defence.
That’s not to mention his clutch goalkicking – with two set shots drilled to perfection, there was literally not a single aspect of his game he didn’t execute magnificently.
Butters was so good that an outstanding night from Connor Rozee in virtually every aspect was relegated to second fiddle, while Willem Drew’s exceptional tackling and bullocking work at stoppages on Jack Viney in particular barely even got a mention. Nor did a gutsy seven-disposal final quarter from Jason Horne-Francis pass muster when Butters was still a rung above.
I’ve seen Marcus Bontempelli play every single week this year, and I don’t think any of his games have matched what Butters did on Friday night. Hell, I honestly can’t recall the great Robbie Gray, Butters’ predecessor in the No.9, having a better game than this one.
If midfield perfection exists, it was Zak Butters at the Adelaide Oval – little surprise how Port have surged with him moved permanently to the on-ball group in the last month.
Zak Butters celebrates a goal. (Photo by Sarah Reed/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
Honestly, though, I hope it’s not lost how exceptional Port Adelaide’s midfield in entirety was (aside from the third quarter – we’ll get to that later). You don’t see Melbourne – that’s Max Gawn, Brodie Grundy, Christian Petracca, Clayton Oliver and Viney Melbourne – getting shaded at stoppages, let alone smashed to smithereens like what Port inflicted on them in the first half.
Up in clearances 18-10 – 6-1 from the centre – despite hitout domination from Grundy and Gawn, the Power went 11-2 and 3-0 in those stats in the second term alone. Whether it was Butters’ agility, Rozee’s breakaway pace, Drew’s turnover-forcing tackles or Horne-Francis’ bull-at-a-gate attack on the footy, the great Demons had no answer other than for Oliver to try and fail to start throwing the ball to try and escape the manic pressure.
The Power’s pressure rating, speaking of that, reached a peak of 211 midway through the second quarter; obscene. The Demons, in contrast, were down at 179.
What was fascinating was that the Dees’ defence was holding up strong against quick entries from centre bounces: Port, to half time, had just one of their five goals to half time from stoppages.
But the Power had a plan: deny the Dees their bread and butter of defensive 50 intercept marks. By quarter time, they’d had zero, and only two across the whole ground: for a team with Steven May and Jake Lever, that’s a huge win for Port.
With Angus Brayshaw also gone as an intercept-marking option, having moved into the midfield rotation with Petracca hobbled by last week’s ankle injury and Tom Sparrow suspended, the Power simply needed to avoid May at all costs and neutralise Lever.
The latter was achieved with Ryan Burton, a defender turned quasi-key forward in the absence of Charlie Dixon and Todd Marshall, and who allowed Lever just one kick and zero marks to half time. May was substantially better than that, but with only two marks to half time, his 16 disposals were pretty much kick-ins or hacked snaps.
The latter was exactly what Port were after. Their other four goals for the half came from turnovers, all from forward half intercepts. Pressure the ball-carrier in a dangerous spot, set up well outside 50, mark, then, with the Dees’ defence still sitting deep, spot up a target in the vacant 30-50 metre range.
Defensively, the territory domination and the pressure helped ease Port’s weakness in defending contested one-on-ones in their back 50. Losing 38 per cent of them this year, the Power are the worst in the comp in that regard, but with the Dees barely able to get a look with just 23 inside 50s for the half, and pressured relentlessly virtually every other time, the visitors weren’t able to take advantage.
Only two Bayley Fritsch goals in the dying stages of the half, taking advantage of momentary lapses in the Power’s set-up, kept the Dees within touching distance. In reality, a 14-point lead despite doing virtually everything right felt ominous.
Sure enough, there was no way the Power could keep dominating the stoppages like they were. But even so, the suddenness of the shift was chilling.
It has been a while since the Demons have looked properly scary – I’d argue it dates back to the first five weeks of 2022 – but this was a power to match the 2021 grand final.
From 6-1 down in centre clearances at half time, the Dees won it 6-2 in the third alone – and you can tell from the volume of times the ball returned to the middle that Melbourne were more efficient at converting than Port Adelaide had been.
Fuelling it all were the usual suspects – Oliver and Petracca. I’d honestly never seen Petracca play a worse half of footy than on Friday night; not just hobbled by his ankle niggle but failing to stick repeated tackles, fumbling alarmingly and unable to break the Power stranglehold to give up two un-Tracca-like holding the ball free kicks.
With just seven disposals to half time and just one clearance, and hardly sighted in centre bounces either, his invisibility was a huge reason for the Power’s dominance. He’d have eight alone, plus two clearances, in the third, the giant awaking with devastating effect.
Even better was Oliver, who’d have 25 disposals and eight clearances to his name by the time the three quarter time siren sounded. With seven inside 50s, too, he was even taking on the usual Petracca role.
With seven of nine goals up until the final moments of the third term, and a 17-point lead, the Demons appeared to have weathered the storm, put another challenger in their place, and reminded the footy world that their best is still THE best.
Along came Butters – as if he hadn’t done enough already – with a clutch goal after the siren from a free kick, putting his head over the ball yet again, and making a difficult set shot with a wet ball look phenomenally easy. Game on again.
We’ve covered the rapidity, and we’ve covered the ruthlessness. But it’s the resilience that really made this win one for the ages.
You couldn’t have scripted what the final term would bring. Against a team that eats final quarters for breakfast this year, following on from a third term in which they seemed to have run out of gas, with Travis Boak subbed out of the game and Trent McKenzie done too, the Dees were just about unbackable.
So what happened? The Power would win the clearance count 12-6 as Petracca and Oliver’s levels returned to the realm of mere mortals and Butters’ stayed exactly where they’d been all night. As hacked kicks became just as crucial as anything more pinpoint, it was a battle of ticker as much as skill – and the Power had heart to spare.
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The pressure returned – the tackle count read 12-6 after ten minutes, and remained lopsided for the rest of the term. They banged in 18 inside 50s to 7, including a remarkable 11 in a row. And still the Melbourne wall wouldn’t crack – May’s sterling job on Jeremy Finlayson the highlight.
If anything summed up a crazy quarter, a crazy game, it was the winning goal: watch it again and notice, in wet conditions, not a single Power player loses their feet who wasn’t literally dragged to the turf.
The Dees did their bit to delay, but Port keep coming: Finlayson prises the ball out of the May’s despairing grasp, who would pay for the fatal mistake of going to ground. With Darcy Byrne-Jones goalside, Trent Rivers, superb all night, somehow pressures him off the ball, turning an open goal into a hopeful soccer that trickles into the square.
The Dees have numbers here, but first to the ball is Horne-Francis; surrounded by red and blue, his first attempt is another scrubby half-metre kick under fierce pressure; but he doesn’t fall, like his tackler Judd McVee does. He stays upright, charges again picks up one-handed in a show of cleanliness worth a six-year contract in itself, and dishes to a free Rozee.
Second fiddle to his fellow 2018 draftee all night, Rozee, with half a second of space, fumbles his first attempt, but recovers with lightning reactions, and with May bearing down, gets his left-footed kick away with a split-second to spare. So many players get that kick wrong, send it wide or don’t get the distance. Not Connor Rozee.
All that took nine seconds.
It was rapid. It was ruthless. It was relentless. So were Port Adelaide. So are Port Adelaide.
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